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4 Best Ecommerce Platforms (No# 1 is Awesome)

Looking for Best Ecommerce Platforms?

Here’s the list. But first, hear me out:

E-commerce, the word sounds like music to my ears.

The way all of us are bound by e-commerce shopping is just unexplainable.

It has made our lives simpler.

A lot of new e-commerce ventures turn almost every day. In case you are reading this, probably you are looking forward to e-commerce development.

E-commerce development is incomplete without an e-commerce platform.

So now the question is, how exactly should you choose an e-commerce platform?

Let me quickly put across the factors that you need to look out for while choosing an e-commerce platform.

In case you are in hurry, here are our 4 best picked ecommerce platforms:

hostingpillBest Ecommerce Platforms
  1. Site123
  2. Shopify
  3. Volusion
  4. Bigcommerce

Factors to look out for in an E-commerce platform:

The market is filled with so many ecommerce platforms that a choice between good and bad becomes confusing.

If I were to choose an e-commerce platform, then below are the list of features that I would be checking out-

I would rather choose an e-commerce platform which is easy to use. Definitely, you would not want to struggle trying to figure out how things work.

E-commerce businesses are closely coupled with analytics of all sorts. The more, the better. These insights can play a very crucial role in the upliftment of your e-store business.

Like analytics, marketing is yet another decision-making factor. This creates brand awareness and spreads the word.

I always feel a good customer support puts an end to most of your troubles. What can be better than getting the right kind of support as and when you need it!!

A known fact is, E-commerce is interlinked to payments. You can’t get working if there are not enough payment gateways available. At the same time, it’s good to be aware of the transaction fees if any.

Security is the base for any e-commerce platform. A security flaw can get the entire e-store shutters down.

While all the above features are important, you certainly do not want to be burning holes to your pockets. Choose the one which is budget friendly in terms of initial and renewal pricing.

I am sure, this would have given you an idea that multiple factors are involved while choosing an e-commerce platform.

Well, it’s never that simple to choose!! Isn’t it.

I would make this simpler by providing my choice of top 5 ecommerce platforms, based on my experience.

So, without wasting much time let’s get started.

1. Site123

Do you know that SITE123 makes it easy to create an e-commerce platform? 

If you run a small business, you need the SITE123 platform. You can pick a suitable online store format and populate it with goods. Then you can customize crucial aspects like tax and shipping to begin selling. 

Because of this, store management is easy. Use any computer, tablet, or smartphone to quickly update your shop with any changes you want.

Features:

  • It’s a cheap and trustworthy hosting service.
  • It has a brilliant editor that outperforms the old-school drag-and-drop method. 

  • It provides Search Engine Optimization services that improve your site’s rankings.

  • Get your online shop set up with one of these beautiful premade layouts.

Plans and Pricing:

You can purchase the plans here for 3, 12, 24, or 36 months. With most services, you can save money by signing up for a long-term package.

Customer Support:

You can get answers and tutorials in their help center. If you need help at any time, you can use their live chat feature, which is available around the clock. You won’t be kept waiting for very long at all.

Security:

SITE123 takes security seriously, so they’ve integrated SSL/HTTPS encryption into their plans. It offers to host services using secure servers to keep your data safe. It uses recent firewall technology, tools, and security protocols to safeguard the information. 

It uses a sophisticated Content Delivery Network to replicate your site’s material over many servers. It will ensure that your pages load as quickly as possible for your visitors.

Payment Gateway:

You can accept major credit cards and PayPal for transactions. You can select between three reliable gateways: Braintree, Stripe, and 2Checkout. Also, these payment gateways are the gold standard in their fields. 

Its e-commerce settings allow you to enter bank information to accept offline payments from customers. It enables you to select between 80 various currencies from across the planet.

Ease of Usage:

While building your portal, the editor loads faster than other e-commerce platforms. So it helps to edit and publish your site more quickly. It is simple to navigate and easy to tweak. It’s easy to get around the dashboard.

2. Shopify

best Ecommerce Platforms: Shopify

Shopify in a lot of sense does not require much introduction. It is well-known, popularly used and one of the top-selling e-commerce platform.

Shopify is based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and was founded in 2004. To its credit, Shopify has over 700,000 merchants.

Let me provide more details about Shopify.

Features:

All plans support unlimited products which is the greatest advantage of using Shopify. As part of Marketing support, various sales channels are available.

The sales channels vary based on the geographical location, which is yet another benefit.

Other features include manual order creation, invoice generation, discount codes, email marketing, abandoned cart recovery, gift cards to name a few.

Shopify provides advanced analytics support and reporting.

shopify features

It gives a 14-day free trial.

While Shopify provides only 10 free templates, it has over 100 premium templates available. These are mobile responsive.

Shopify provides an all in one exclusive Shopify app store. This contains over 100 free and premium apps. The app store is yet another strong point of using Shopify.

Plans and Pricing:

The feature list as mentioned is exhaustive. So, is Shopify expensive since it provides so many features?

A straight answer is, it all depends on the plan you choose.

At a high-level Shopify has 3 main plans– Basic Shopify starting at $29/month, Shopify starting at $79/month and Advanced Shopify starting at $299/month.

shopify website builder plans

Like most platforms, Shopify’s longer duration plans are cheaper or rather provide some discounts.

If you do not need too many advanced features and are just starting, then Shopify also has a Shopify Lite plan at $9/month.

If you need more advance plan with a 99.98% uptime guarantee, the Shopify has a more elite plan called “Shopify Gold”.

Customer Support:

Customer support is available in Shopify using Resource section and the Help section. The amount of information available over here is exhaustive and contains almost every topic.

Other ways you can reach them is over email, phone, and live chat. The live chat is available 24/7.

The only issue I found was the very long wait time.

shopify chat

I waited for 15 minutes and then terminated the chat. Shopify also has a huge blog section which covers several topics of e-commerce interests.

Another important aspect is their FAQ, which answers most of the queries.

Security:

As the first part of security, you get free SSL certificate with every plan.

Shopify is a Level 1 PCI DSS compliant. This means you can be least worried about your card transactions.

shopify security

Shopify provides auto updates of any security patches.

The Shopify app store provides several top-rated security driven apps which can be implemented to your store.

Payment Gateway:

With no doubts, Shopify has good support for Payment gateways. From your account, you can choose and manage the payment gateways.

While it supports Card payments, it also supports region-specific digital wallets. PayPal, Google Pay are few of these.

shopify payment methods

Shopify supports country wise popular payment gateways as well as International payment gateways. Also supported is Shopify payments which are powered by Stripe.

In case your region supports cryptocurrencies then Shopify allows you to configure cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoins, Litecoin and over 300 digital currencies.

Now here is a twist in the tale, Shopify has a transaction fee which varies between 0.5% to 2%. So, while you expand your business, Shopify earns a share of this.

Ease of Usage:

Shopify has an interface which is not conventional in most aspects. While this is not complex at all, a lot of people find this different.

easy to customize shopify

At a higher level, you would find most of the menus available on the left side. Overall once you get used to the interface, it is simple and easy to navigate.


Additional Resources:

Best Website Hosting for Online Store by X‑Cart

3. Best ecommerce platforms: Volusion

best Ecommerce Platforms: volusion

Again, I have another name which is popular and well-known to most e-commerce developers.

Volusion is also one of the top-rated ecommerce platforms used by several big and small brands.

Volusion was first started in 1999 and has its headquarters in Austin, Texas, USA. This too has a 14-day free trial.

Next, let me speak more about Volusion in detail.

Features:

Volusion has a good collection of free and premium themes. Not only are these mobile responsive but are also visually appealing.

Social media integrations and getting traffic insights is extremely simple. Also, Volusion supports several advanced analytics with its built-in SEO tools.

volusion features

Advance reporting, abandoned cart recovery, API integrations are few other features which Volusion provides.

Few of the plans have a number of products restrictions while the others support unlimited products.

Plans and Pricing:

Volusion, like most other platforms, gives you benefits for longer duration plans. So, you choose an annual plan, you get discounts.

Volusion has a total of 4 plans.

volusion webstie builder plans

The most basic personal plan starts at $29/month. While this is high priced, the plan provides most of the basic e-commerce functionalities.

Next, the Professional plan cost $79/month. You get unlimited products with the Business plan which costs $299/month.

Finally, you also have a Prime plan which has customizable pricing based on your requirements.

Customer Support:

Volusion does have attractive customer support with its dedicated resource section.

The resource is well segregated and you would find most of the topics being covered over here.

You can reach Volusion’s customer support through email or chat. Over the chat, you can drop a message which will be replied within a few hours.

volusion chat

Another useful aspect is its blog and FAQ section.

Security:

A most important aspect is the PCI compliance and Volusion is completely PCI compliant. Volusion guarantees a super 99.9% uptime.

Next moving on to the SSL certificates. Now, this is not part of Volusion’s plan. However, you can opt for this at a separate pricing.

You can choose for Volusion SSL or Symantec SSL or GeoTrust SSL or Thawte SSL. All of these have different pricing.

Payment Gateway:

Volusion does support most of the basic payment gateway. Your region-specific payment gateway is something that it includes.

While Volusion supports popular digital wallets, it does not support digital currencies of any form.

Ease of Usage:

Volusion dashboard is filled with several features like most ecommerce platforms.

At first glance, you may find the interface to be different from most other platforms.

Volusion Feature Dashboard

Though the interface is different, it is intuitive, feature-rich and provides smooth navigation. Overall its simple even for novice users.

4. Best ecommerce platforms: Bigcommerce

best Ecommerce Platforms: Bigcommerce

The fifth option on my list is Bigcommerce. I am sure you would have heard this name before.

Bigcommerce was started in 2009 and has its headquarters in Austin, Texas. It claims to manage a 99.99% or a 100% uptime in most cases.

Bigcommerce provides a 15-day free trial.

Moving on to more details about Bigcommerce.

Features:

Bigcommerce has a good collection of fast loading and mobile responsive templates. Designing and customizations are made simpler.

Bigcommerce has several intuitive e-commerce specific features which are suitable for small business, B2B as well as enterprise-scale businesses.

It has some strong analytics, SEO, marketing, reporting, cart recovery, and many more useful features. You get a complete e-commerce package with any plan you choose.

Bigcommerce Features

All of this is supported with a good set of third-party APIs. It has well-curated apps which can provide additional functionalities easily.

Plans and Pricing:

Bigcommerce, in terms of pricing is almost at par with Shopify or Volusion. It starts at $29.95/month.

It has a total of 4 plans. The starting plan also referred to as Standard plan starts at $29.95/month. The Plus plans starts at $79.95/month.

best Ecommerce Platforms: Bigcommerce’s Pricing

The other more advance plans are Pro and Enterprise. The Pro plan starts at $249.95/month. The Enterprise plan has custom pricing.

Customer Support:

No doubts, Bigcommerce has a very good customer support. It has an exhaustive resource section dedicated to various functionalities.

Bigcommerce also includes forum support, blog section, case study, and an FAQ section.

You can reach them over email or call.

best Ecommerce Platforms: bigcommerce chat

Security:

Bigcommerce guarantees an industry-leading uptime of 99.99%.

best Ecommerce Platforms: BigCommerce

Not only is this reliable and fast but is also secure in multiple ways.

It has multiple layer security with sever specific firewall, scanners, intrusion detection system and 24/7 monitoring.

Bigcommerce provides SSL certificate and has DDoS protection. And yes, Bigcommerce is Level1 PCI compliant.

Payment Gateway:

Bigcommerce has a very good support for payment gateways. It has support for over 40 pre-integrated payment gateways serving over 100 countries.

Almost 250 local payment methods are supported. Bigcommerce also supports digital wallets such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and others.

Bigcommerce does not charge a transaction fee which is something great. To highlight, Bigcommerce does not support digital currencies.

Ease of Usage:

Bigcommerce in a way is neither simple nor complex. It has an intuitive dashboard featuring all options.

best Ecommerce Platforms: bigcommerce dashboard

It is easy to get started and explore. With all this, there are video tutorials available to guide you through the dashboard features.

Conclusion:

It’s never easy choosing the right e-commerce platform, especially when each one has its own benefits and shortcomings.

All of these can be a suitable choice but grossly depends on your business requirement.

If I must choose one, then I would go ahead with Bigcommerce.

Bigcommerce is popular, commits to a dedicated uptime, provides good speed. It has reliable services with excellent inbuilt security features.

Well, there is more to this!!

You get tons of apps, good customer support and can build intuitive UI designs.

While this may seem a bit expensive, it’s worth the money in the long run.